The case for civic engagement in schools

Making the case for civic engagement in schools

KIRSTIN MATTHEWS and MAXIE HOLLINGSWORTH

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, April 8, 2010

Gone forever are the days when a high school graduate could go to work on an assembly line and expect to earn a middle-class standard of living. Students who leave high school today without skills and unprepared for further learning are unlikely to ever earn enough to raise a family. They are being sentenced to a lifetime of poverty.

— Tony Wagner,Making the Grade, 2002

Last year, the Texas State Board of Education approved changes to the K-12 science curriculum standards, known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS. The revisions go into effect for the 2010–11 school year and include a new requirement for middle and high school students to maintain lab notebooks to record data, observations, graphs and calculations.

While professional development opportunities are available to help teachers prepare for the revisions, educators around the state are scrambling to incorporate the changes, understandably with some trepidation. Elementary teachers, in particular, are in a difficult spot: They generally are not science or curriculum specialists but must now integrate hands-on science instruction into their daily lessons as mandated by the new standards.

The state should be commended for recognizing the need to engage students in more rigorous science learning. Hands-on instruction — particularly inquiry-based — can be a valuable tool to help teachers set up appropriate learning situations for their students. On the other hand, teachers are limited by time, large class sizes, inadequate facilities and equipment, pressures to focus on standardized tests, lack of comfort with science content and even resistance to new teaching strategies. The availability of appropriate resources to support science learning is especially critical for teachers in Houston, where experts estimate that up to 42 percent of ninth-grade students will drop out of high school.

An injection of support from the national level might help change these numbers. In November 2009, President Barack Obama announced the launch of his “Educate to Innovate” campaign to improve K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and math, known collectively as STEM. The campaign involves federal agencies, national corporations, scientists and nonprofits working collaboratively to focus on recruitment, retention and training of teachers; providing summer learning programs for students; and encouraging scientists and engineers to volunteer in classrooms.

The prominence of the campaign's supporters — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden; Sally Ride, a physicist and the first American woman in space; and Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation — underscores the importance of science and math education to our nation's future, as well as the significant challenges in education nationwide. U.S. middle and high school students don't perform well on standardized tests for science and math. And compared with their peers from other industrialized countries, U.S. students lack the critical thinking and reasoning skills needed to apply what they've learned in science and math. They scored below 18 and nine other nations respectively on international science and math literacy tests.

In the Houston area, Rice University is working to change the relationship between the STEM and K-12 education communities by increasing contact and access between the two. Teacher training at the Rice University School Mathematics Project and the Elementary Model Science Lab, as well as innovative programs like SciRAVE, build science and math skills and reinforce classroom learning. The Baker Institute for Public Policy sponsors the Civic Scientist Outreach Series, where scientists and engineers from Rice visit area middle and high school classrooms to facilitate hands-on experiments, lead minilectures and share information about their own journeys into the STEM fields. The goal is to give students and teachers an opportunity to interact with scientists and to learn about real-life applications for science and technology. The Civic Scientist Program demystifies science by exposing K-12 teachers and students to STEM experts; helps teachers incorporate high-level science concepts into the classroom; and inspires students to consider careers in science.

Through the Civic Scientist Program, Rice hopes to improve the educational problems facing students in the Houston area, where in 2009 only 58.5 percent of HISD students graduated. Rice provides resource-rich educational experiences that are vital to helping students prepare for college or the work force. The need is real for Houston's 352,535 K-12 students who may someday work in the health care, energy, engineering and telecommunications industries that dominate the region. The Civic Scientist Program helps change conversations that U.S. students have about their future and makes STEM disciplines more accessible. The core of science education is effective teaching, and educators need an arsenal of tools like the Civic Scientist Program at their disposal, particularly in Houston, where not enough students are prepared to become engineers, scientists and physicians — careers in high demand in the 21st century.

Matthews is a fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute. Her research focuses on the intersection between traditional biomedical research and public policy. Matthews' current projects include the Baker Institute International Stem Cell Policy Program, the Civic Scientist Lecture Series and policy studies in research and development funding, genomics and climate change. Hollingsworth is the program director for the Office of K-12 Initiatives at Rice University, where she is responsible for coordinating the university's K-12 educational outreach efforts in the Houston metropolitan area.